‘Secure connectivity’ is the common thread in smart city technologies
AUSTIN, Texas–With an addressable market comprising virtually every city and town on the planet, carriers and service providers are adapting existing product lines and creating new solutions to address the smart city. AT&T is no exception.
During the Smart Cities Innovation Summit, Matt Foreman, lead product marketing manager for the smart cities business unit, discussed the outlook for smart city adoption: “AT&T is super excited about this space. Really, secure connectivity is the common thread woven through any smart city technology,” which can range from smart electric and water meters to connected garbage cans, street lights, irrigation systems and even acoustic leak detection.
“All of those are anchored on secure connectivity whether that be LTE, whether that be fiber,” or satellite, Foreman said. “We want to make sure we’re the connectivity provider of choice, taking our best in breed practices and capabilities to help cities solve problems for their citizens.”
He emphasized that, when dealing with government, derisking a deployment is key. “The technology that’s influencing and changing the direction of how cities can operate, interact with their citizens and create that compelling place to live is tried, true and proven. There’s a huge startup ecosystem that we want to solve for and bring into that fold, but at the same time we don’t want cities to think these are new technologies.”
Foreman also highlighted the differences between selling to government and selling to the enterprise. “”When you think about the enterprise side versus government, there’s different sales cycles and different procurement considerations. When you think about some of these account teams and relationships that are out there…AT&T is really well positioned to come in and help bubble up decision making and strategy out of the individual departments to a higher level so you get incremental, exponential value.”
